


Ghostly Gifts

by c0cunt



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ghosts, M/M, marco is cranky in the morning, possessed objects
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 02:15:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6885145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/c0cunt/pseuds/c0cunt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean has a hobby of releasing ghosts from the objects they've possessed.  Marco usually humors him more than helps him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghostly Gifts

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly I don't know. This was inspired by a Tumblr thing but I'm not putting this into the minifics series because it wasn't prompted to me by someone. This is also going to be the first fic I'm posting without promoting it on Tumblr, mostly because lately everything's been making my head ache and I'm trying to minimize my pain currently.

  Jean started his morning the way he usually did.  Shoving the coffeemaker on, stumbling into the bathroom to piss, and then talking to the newest haunted object he’d gotten in the mail the evening before (the newest one on this particular morning happened to be a haunted CD player).  His parents thought him a bit...Crazy, honestly, but since he was working steadily at his father’s company (The Kirschstein Foundation had just recently started a campaign with the Susan G Komen Foundation to raise awareness on cancers in the chest area, after Mr Kirschstein was diagnosed with lung cancer, that Jean had been put in charge of), his father let him “indulge” in his favorite pastime of purchasing haunted objects off of Ebay.  As much as Jean wanted to argue with his parents that it wasn’t a waste of time or money, they just wouldn’t understand that he was trying to help the spirits trapped in the objects...Or they’d send him off to have his head checked out again.  He was so very glad to have his boyfriend, Marco, believe him, especially after the escapades he had gotten them into (accidentally!) when he had first figured out that he could help trapped spirits.

 

* * *

  


  It had started when his then-neighbor Marco, had brought him into the attic to play with some of the “neat old junk” that the Bodt family owned.  At seven years old, Jean had been a wide-eyed, mouthy little brat, and easily pissed off Marco’s great-great-grandmother.  She had been spiritually bound to an ancient locket that had been passed down on Marco’s mother’s side since her premature death.  Marco had believed Jean’s excitable exclaiming over her, but the rest of the Bodt family...Not so much.  They were especially upset about Jean taking the liberty of destroying the last of the photos they still had of great-great-grandmother Bodt.  Mrs. Kirschstein had to smooth things over with profuse apologies and more than a dozen of her best cakes, and even then Marco’s family had moved away before Jean could pretend to apologize for helping the old woman’s spirit out of the old locket and get rid of some old photos they probably hadn’t even remembered were up in their attic.  In their emails that followed, Marco tried to assure Jean that they had moved purely because of his father’s newest job offer, but Jean was convinced (by his mother and Mrs. Bodt, in conversations he had accidentally overheard on the phone) that it was his fault.  So he decided not to tell anyone else about the elderly ghosts stuck in their old favorite planters, or the even more creepy angry children who were trapped in their favorite toy and just wanted someone to play with.  But he did feel the need to help them out.

  It wasn’t until Jean was about nineteen, and living on campus as he worked hard on his degree in business management (while rooming with Marco, who had easily fallen back into the best friend role he’d never truly left), that he had been approached by Hanji Zoe.  They were eccentric, to say the least, but they had noticed Jean’s eyes lingering on the pendant they knew to contain the spirit of their friend Nanaba, but had never really figured out how to release their spirit.  (More likely, Jean had determined later, as Hanji had stared brokenly at the pendant after Jean had figured out how to release them, Hanji just hadn’t wanted to lose their friend again.)  But Hanji had been instrumental in the creation of Jean’s hobby of releasing trapped spirits, often dragging him to their laptop to show him a listing on Ebay for a doll or ring or something that was haunted.

 

* * *

  


  Which is what led to this morning, as Marco was just poking his head out from underneath the covers, the scent of strong coffee tempting him away from the warm ball of blankets he had wrapped himself into overnight.  Their apartment was perpetually cold, which Jean continually apologized for, but Marco usually didn’t mind it too much.  Since he was 95% sure that it was one of his days off, Marco let himself slowly untwist himself from the blankets, wiggling already chilly toes as he stretched like an overgrown cat.  Stretched out on his belly, Maro wondered for a minute if it’d be alright to just roll over and go back to sleep.  His eyes had closed for not even ten seconds before their bedroom door was flung open, and Jean was shaking his shoulder as he babbled about needing his help.

  “Fuck oooooooff,” Marco mumbled sleepily into his pillow, his hands clutching more tightly to the blankets that were wrapped around his shoulders.  Jean rolled his eyes at him, but changed up his tactic, threading his fingers through messy black hair.  Marco let out a grumbling happy hum as he stretched his legs out again, the joints in his hips and knees popping noisily.

  “Marco, baby, I need your help sweetheart,” Jean whispered, gently untangling Marco’s hands from the blanket shield.  Marco let out a string of grumpy noises, but didn’t resist otherwise, until his shoulders were uncovered.  He whined pitifully, and attempted to burrow more deeply into the blanket ball, but Jean was having none of that.  Unceremoniously, Jean ripped off the blankets he had gathered, and threw them onto the far side of the bed, causing Marco to shriek as his naked upper body was exposed to the sudden cold.  “The new one wants to hear a song he tried to learn to play, and you know piano best out of the two of us,” Jean said logically as he continued to strip Marco of blankets.

  It took only ten more minutes of whining (from Marco) and cajoling (from Jean) until Marco was out of the bed, grumpily dressed, and on his way to their tiny living room.  A large sofa, coffee table, and an upright piano took up most of the space in the room, with the coffee table and top of the piano covered in knick knacks that had once possessed ghosts.  At least it was easy to navigate around. Like most of their other things, the piano had been purchased from an estate sale and had contained a ghost.  It was almost funny to Marco that most likely the only things they owned that didn’t contain ghosts at one time or another was their underwear and probably their bath towels.  He wasn’t 100% sure on that guess either.  Marco sat heavily on the piano seat, as Jean carefully placed the haunted CD player in a sort of ‘guest of honor’ spot on their coffee table, and idly plunked at the keys for a minute before finally asking.  “So, what song does he want to hear?”

  Jean cocked his head as he looked expectantly at the CD player.  The way that Jean was able to hear what the ghosts (or whatever, honestly Marco wasn’t sure if they were ghosts or if they were fragments of Jean’s mental stability but he humored it anyways) were saying always made Marco feel more than a little bit anxious while waiting for Jean to “translate” for him.  Jean made a noise of disgust before he turned to look at Marco and muttered disdainfully.  “He was trying to learn How To Save a Life.”

  Marco just barely stopped himself from laughing, the only evidence that he was about to was a tiny snort that escaped from him.  Jean absolutely _hated_ that song, after all the times that Hanji had played it and serenaded him with it after each time he had successfully set a spirit free.  (At least, the ones that Hanji knew about had gotten a song from them; Jean had released plenty more than Hanji knew about, especially after they had graduated and slowly drifted away from the eccentric botanist.)  “Does he want me to sing as well?”  Marco asked, biting at his lip immediately to keep himself from laughing even more when Jean shot him a dirty look.  They both knew that Jean was the better singer out of either of them, and that Jean would then take it upon himself to sing it if that’s what the ghost wanted.  Judging by the heavy sigh that Jean let out as he dropped onto the edge of the piano’s seat, the ghost thought that singing would be a great addition to the song.

  “I hate this song,” Jean grumbled as Marco started to play, barely giving him enough time to draw breath to properly sing.  Jean shot him a dirty look, but didn’t try to tell Marco to start over, instead speeding up his own singing so he could take a deeper breath when he needed it.  Marco may have forgotten how to play the chorus for half a minute, and instead stretched the bridge as long as possible, but as he played and Jean sang, the room warmed up a bit.  And not just from exertion, Marco concluded, as he looked over at soft look on Jean’s face as he stopped singing.  When Marco let the song taper off, the last few notes quietly echoing in the silence, Jean let out a quiet sigh as he leaned his weight against Marco’s back.

  “Well...We got a new CD player at least,” Jean joked weakly.  Marco just rolled his eyes as he started to play something that he _knew_ would put Jean into a better mood.  He skipped the intro to get to the more recognizable part of the song, which made Jean’s head shoot up from where he had started to lean it against Marco’s shoulder, a squawk and a light slap following that made Marco laugh.  Of course, Jean couldn’t help bopping along slightly to the song, even as he leveled a glare that would’ve been dangerous if directed at someone else.  Marco crossed his eyes and stuck his tongue out at Jean, gaining a laugh that was much less annoyed than Jean appeared to be, exactly what he was hoping for.

 

  “Fine, keep playing that,” Jean harrumphed, crossing his arms but not moving to stand, “See if you get any kisses after you brush your teeth.”

  Of course, that just prompted Marco to start chasing Jean around in an attempt to steal kisses from him before brushing his teeth, just to prove him wrong.

**Author's Note:**

> (Here's [the song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6X3rVU1H-c) that Marco decided to be a brat and start playing)


End file.
